Greens challenged to support higher drinking age

Progressive MP Matt Robson is welcoming the Greens' statement today indicating that the party may yet change its stance and support proposals to raise the minimum legal purchasing age back to twenty years.

"Day after day we get reports that indicate that the decision to lower the drinking age to eighteen, in 1999, was a mistake.

"This weekend, for example, police in Nelson have reported a sharp increase in the number of school students who are driving after drinking.

"It has also been reported that drink-drivers last year killed 142 people - the highest number since 1998.

"Green MP Nandor Tanczos today issued a press statement primarily about a conference that never occurred but which missed the main point. It is time politicians admitted we got it wrong in 1999 but that we are now strong enough to put the drinking age back up to twenty where it belongs," Matt Robson said.

Matt Robson has drafted a Bill which proposes to raise the minimum alcohol purchasing age to 20. The Bill also proposes to strengthen provisions relating to the supply of liquor to minors and to strengthen liquor advertising law.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>